We must use life challenges to TEACH, not PROTECT our children!
Conversations about things that are challenging our children are tough at the best of times, because as a parent, we care, and when it hurts our children, it hurts us. But ultimately, I believe our responsibility as a parent isn’t just to ‘protect’ them, it’s to ‘teach’ them… not just to “love” them, but to “lead” them!
You must embrace their challenges – the purpose of these conversations, if they are going to help the CHILD, is to teach and train your child to become emotionally stable in dealing with a challenge, and to improve their self esteem by helping them feel that they can deal with their challenges on their OWN. It is not to be the “I’ll-fix-that” parent who disagrees with the challenge and is going to “see the teacher tomorrow to stop it from happening”.
This kind of response will not teach your child anything, other than to be dependent on YOU – which disempowers them! That kind of reaction tells the subconscious mind of your child “mum/dad doesn’t believe I can handle this, I am not good enough to work this out, I need their help because I can’t do it myself”.
This kind of ‘self talk’ in the subconscious mind of your child destroys what we are trying to achieve here – an increase in their self-worth, self-esteem, confidence and a feeling of “my parent believes in me, and knows I can do things by myself because I am good enough, and I don’t need their help” – we must remind ourselves, that this moment is about THEM, not us!
If you believe your child’s challenge needs to be addressed with a teacher for example, do it privately, without your child knowing. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and sometimes your child will need to feel defended by you, and like you’ll go in to bat for them. But mostly, use these situations as a way to affirm to your child that THEY are good enough to deal with things, and that you believe in them!
Once you’ve sorted it out privately with the teacher, and the challenge resolves, your child will feel like THEY created the changes. This will empower them even more when they deal with challenges in the future. They’ll know they handled the last situation, and it turned out perfect, so they’ll know they can handle this situation!
Congratulations to you, the parent… you now have an empowered child who is beginning to understand their own inner power. Take full credit for it too… empowered children aren’t just “born” that way, they are RAISED that way”. So hats off to you!!
